Or By Opposing
by Sakura Tsukikage
Summary: After the end of the battle against Mariemaia, Duo visits a wounded Heero in the hospital and they discuss, among other things, where they'll go from there.


**A/N: **This is in some ways a sequel to "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream." I didn't intend to write any kind of continuation, but then this came to me over my Christmas holiday this year. It takes place right after the end of _Endless Waltz_. Unlike the previous fic in this loose series, it's going to be in more than one section. The title is from the famous line from _Hamlet_—"Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?" I know the genre says frienship, but it verges somewhere in between friendship and yaoi--feel free to take it any way you want. Rated high for coarse language.

**Disclaimer: **Gundam Wing belongs to a lot of people, Bandai/Sunrise/Asahi among them. Unfortunately, none of those people has ever been me.

**Or By Opposing**

**One**

Even the hospital was quiet and dark at night, though the periodic blinking of lights and the beeping, whirring, humming, you name it, of the variety of medical machines kept it from being entirely silent. And the lights on the Christmas tree in the lobby were on, a dazzle of jewel tones reflecting off glass ornaments and tinsel in the room dimmed because of the lateness of the hour. It was a nice Christmas tree, Duo supposed, for a hospital, but even it couldn't really give the sterile building any Christmas warmth. It felt cold inside, though of course it was warmer than the icy air outside the doors, as if the dull beige of the walls and the gleaming white of the tile floor somehow exuded chill. Still, it was a nice gesture. Kind. Sorta thoughtful, though it wasn't like the person he was here to see would ever have appreciated it. Sometimes Duo wondered if he even knew what Christmas was, or was aware that there was actually a reason everyone got off work on the twenty-fifth of December.

Leaning on the counter with a grin and a question and a flash of his honorary Preventers' badge got him the room number, and Duo made a mental note to thank Sally for that later. Assuming she didn't run off with Wufei somewhere after she tracked the other pilot down, in which case he could just mail the Chinese boy and ask him to do it for him. Which he would probably never do, considering how well Wufei and gratitude got along, but hey, it was the thought that counted, and Sally would probably read Wufei's e-mail before he did anyway.

The nurse on duty offered to escort him to the room, but Duo thanked him for the offer and declined. He sure as hell didn't need the staff's help to find the room, and the idea of visiting in the company of medical personnel just felt wrong somehow. After all, he was more used seeing the stoic super-soldier do whacked-out things like set his own broken limbs rather than admit he needed medical care from anyone else. Crazy bastard.

There was such a thing as taking self-reliant too far, Duo thought, and directed it at the boy lying in a hospital bed three floors above the second floor the elevator had just passed, knowing full well he'd have given him nothing a blank stare and a flat disagreement in response had he voiced the thought to him in person. Elevators were a security risk in general, but he figured the odds of this particular hospital being attacked by any given group right then were vanishingly small at best, and he was worn out, tired down to his bones. All of them were, after the last couple of days.

What a week. If he was lucky he'd never have another like it. And maybe a peaceful Christmas next year, with enough time to at least consider attending mass, instead of getting a sick twinge of guilt in the pit of his stomach a few days later when he actually remembered.

So it wasn't like he could talk, really. But hey, at least he'd actually _been_ to mass in his lifetime. Fuck, at least he knew what it _was_, and that there were religious services you were supposed to attend in the vicinity of the end of December and the beginning of January, in a non-academic sense.

The elevator dinged, announcing his arrival on the correct floor, which, if anything, was even more deserted than the ground floor, with fake pine garlands adorning the walls of the empty corridors that just looked lonely and more than a little sad under the dimmed lights. It was room 535, which only took Duo a second to find after a moment of staring blankly at the numbers beside the first couple of doors he came across until he figured out the numbering system. The door was closed, but it wasn't locked when he tried the handle. Handle—old-fashioned, god. Was this hospital high-class or just old? Both, probably. Relena—he would never in his life be able to think of her as Vice-Foreign Minister Darlian—had chosen it, after all. And they were on Earth, where everything seemed to be either high-class or ancient or some combination thereof to Duo's colony-raised eyes.

So this was where they'd taken Heero. At least he was being well-taken care of, right? Better than what he'd have done to himself on the field, at any rate.

There he stopped, and sort of hesitated for a minute. He still wasn't quite clear on what exactly had happened inside of the Bartons' sealed fortress of a complex, but he'd heard that Heero had showed up and collapsed in Relena's arms not long afterwards. He figured something fairly important had gone down in between those two events, but he'd been close to collapsing with relief himself when he saw Heero, even as pale and torn up and dead-looking as he'd been, being carried out with Relena beside him—because he'd been sure that Heero was gone when the Zero had blown, sure that that was it, and this was the end (no matter how many times Heero had managed to cheat death, every single time Duo half-expected that it was this one that'd really be it), and just knowing that Wing Zero's last pilot was alive had been enough right at that moment. How Heero'd gotten down there and what had happened hadn't really seemed to matter so much.

But now he wanted to know. Now he wanted to know everything he possibly could, and, well, he wasn't sure how to ask. Starting with how badly had Heero really been hurt? He was well enough for visitors, and sure, the doctor said he definitely wasn't going to die, at least not this time. Well, whoopee. Big surprise. Duo was pretty sure that Heero didn't have the faintest clue how one actually went about the business of dying, seeing as how blowing up his Gundam with him still inside didn't seem to be enough to off him. But there was a hell of a big difference between "not dead" and "fine," even with Heero involved, and it struck Duo that he'd like to know where exactly on that continuum he could expect to find the other pilot.

He should have asked Relena when she'd called him and asked him to come on down and keep an eye on Heero for the night, but he'd been too emotional still (all right, so that last one had been close enough to shake him up a little, so sue him for caring), and too glad to know that Heero was doing all right and where he'd been taken, to think to ask. She was undoubtedly mired in meetings up to her neck right now despite the lateness of the hour, so it wasn't like he could keep delaying by standing here outside the door to Heero's hospital room and calling her on his cell phone.

Not to mention that that would be absolutely pathetic.

Even more pathetic than the slightest bit of, well, satisfaction that he couldn't bury entirely, that it would be him here with Heero for the rest of the night and not Relena. She was a great girl, amazing, really, but she'd had him all to herself ever since the battle, and Heero had friends, too, friends that were going half out of their minds with worry for him, incidentally, and Relena was no Gundam pilot. How could she know what it was like? It was mean-spirited and unworthy and just plain _nasty_, and even thinking it made Duo feel ashamed of himself, but Duo couldn't kill the feeling completely.

Well, he thought, staring blankly at the featureless wood of the door (_wood_ doors? This place really was high class), fuck it. And yet he still couldn't bring himself to turn that knob and let himself inside.

Was he scared of what he'd find? What he wouldn't find? Or just uncertain and a little embarrassed over how he'd almost fallen apart earlier still? He wasn't sure. Duo knew he seemed more in touch with his emotions, more normal, than most of the other Gundam pilots on the surface, but a lot of the time it was all a big damn act. He'd had to have Quatre explain to him why he couldn't stop shaking after the battle, for Christ's sake. Good thing one of them sort of understood these things, or he'd probably still be a shivering mess.

It sure hadn't been because he himself was scared of dying. He couldn't remember a time when he'd really been scared of that.

Duo had no idea how long he would have stood frozen with his hand on the knob of that old-fashioned wood door if he hadn't heard it, but at the sound of the strangled, half-muffled cry from inside the room he wrenched the door open so hard it bounced against the wall behind him and swung closed again even as he lunged into the room, shutting with a click behind him. And then once he was inside the room he just stood there like an idiot, his hands falling back limp and helpless to his sides, with no idea what to do.

He'd seen Heero looking frighteningly fragile before, but never like this, never this much, bandaged, with bruises where there wasn't bandages and skin the off-white color of the sheets where there wasn't bruises, brown hair flopping messily forward all around and into his face, stuck damply to the curves of his cheeks and forehead with sweat, and the blankets twisted around him like he'd been wrestling or something, one foot flung free of the blankets with a wrinkled sock around the ankle and the hospital pajamas riding up one leanly muscular calf. But what caught and held Duo's attention was the way his hands were fisted tight and desperate in the sheets up near his face, how he'd rolled his body over so his head was half covered by one arm in a defensive gesture that looked half like he was trying to protect himself in an air raid and half like he didn't want anyone to see his eyes, how his face was pressed into the flat hospital pillows and he was biting down on one of them even as he whimpered and twitched in his sleep.

Duo had had enough nightmares in his time to recognize one instantly, and tried to force himself to quiet from them enough to recognize that, too. He didn't think he'd try to keep himself quiet even in his sleep, but there was Heero for you, stoic to the end, even when he was a broken wreck and nothing about him was in any shape for it. Duo just . . . he didn't know what to _do_. The one other time he'd tried to comfort Heero in a nightmare he'd said his name—just his name because he knew better than to try to touch one of his fellow Gundam pilots while the other boy was in the middle of a nightmare—and had gotten a fist to the face for it. Heero had almost broken his goddamn nose.

But then Heero gave a short, choking, cut-off cry, most of the sound buried in the pillows below him, and he had to do something, he couldn't just stand there, not with Heero sounding anything like that. So he stepped forward, steeled himself for some serious pain in a few seconds, and leaned over Heero to grab his shoulders and roll him onto his back and hold him down, with a quick glance at his charts to make sure there wasn't anything seriously wrong with his friend's back that he should know about before he tried stunts like that. Fortunately, there wasn't.

"Um . . . Heero, buddy?" he said lamely. "You . . . uh, you in there?"

Dark blue eyes the color of the last layer of atmosphere before space snapped open and stared up past him, blank and glazed and not seeing much of anything. Heero tensed and his shoulders bucked up off the bed, but Duo was more than strong enough to hold him down, and wasn't that scary? Heero had taken one hell of a beating if he couldn't shrug off Duo's attempt at a gentle but firm grip. He wasn't even holding him all that hard. There was a sudden gust of air, drawn in through bruised, cracked lips in a swift hiss, and Heero's lashes fluttered against his cheeks, but there was no other reaction.

How come he'd never noticed how thick and dark Heero's eyelashes were before? They feathered across his pale, bruised cheeks like ink in the second his eyes were closed, a couple shades darker than his hair so that they were practically black against the pallor of his skin. And since when did he notice other guys' eyelashes in the first place? (They were short and fanned out perfectly across his cheeks, almost as pretty as a doll's.)

"All right," he said as easily as he could when there was no response. Not like that was unusual for Heero, he told himself. Most of the time he could have been talking to a wall for all the response he got out of the Japanese pilot. "All right, gotcha, man. Not answering the door right now, s'only understandable. Been a rough couple of days. Can't blame you for wanting to take a break."

The tension in Heero's taut, knotted-up shoulders relaxed infinitesimally, Duo felt it beneath his hands. The other boy's eyes fluttered closed again. At what—the words? His voice? The thin body beneath his hands began to shake just slightly, shivers running through his muscles. Maybe he was cold. Duo caught at the blankets and pulled them up over Heero, tucking them carefully in around him, but most of him doubted that was the reason for the shudders. He knew all about the kind of uncontrollable trembling that had nothing whatsoever to do with temperature. Heero's head rolled to one side, his breath catching in his throat, and Duo moved one hand up to touch the back of his skull with no idea what he was doing. But his hand seemed to have a plan, so he gave up and let his fingers stroke uncertainly through Heero's disordered hair, hoping that that would actually help and he wouldn't just get socked in the mouth again. That kind of movement sure wouldn't be good for the other boy's injuries, after all. Not to mention that punches from Heero hurt like a bitch.

"I mean," he continued, warming to his theme a little, "we've been through some absolute shit in the last week or so, and during the holidays, too, on top of it. You'd think the bad guys'd be able to choose their times a little better. What is it about the Bartons and all the rest of them that makes 'em want to fight on Christmas, anyway? Normal people want to stay home with their families and eat too much and open presents or something—" Duo really had no idea what normal people did on Christmas, but he figured it had to be something along those lines if what he'd seen on television was any indication "—but _they_ always want to do something like drop space stations onto Earth or stage a coup of the Earth Sphere or some power-hungry idiocy like that. Screwed up, isn't it?" A sudden thought struck him and he veered off onto the tangent it presented without even thinking about it, simply trying to keep talking to see if it would comfort Heero at all. Shouldn't be too hard. Letting his mouth run on without the influence of his brain was one of the things he was best at. "Hey, d'you think Trowa always wants to fight on Christmas too? Think it has something to do with the name? Or maybe it's genetic. But plenty of those people ain't related to the Bartons at all. Could be contagious. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll have to ask Trowa if he ever has an irresistible urge to go out and start trouble around Christmastime next time I see him." His position leaning over Heero's bed with his hand stroking his hair was starting to get a little uncomfortable, so without breaking the stream of words, Duo said, "Okay, buddy, getting a little stiff here—I'm still a little sore from that whole mess myself, though nothing near how bad you look, no offense or anything—so I'm just gonna move so I'm kneeling on the floor beside you, alright? I'm not leavin' ya or anything, 'kay? I'm gonna be here the whole rest of the night, and nothing you do or say is gonna get rid of me. You're stuck with me for now, flyboy." On sudden impulse, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Heero's forehead before he could think about what he was doing and chicken out, the kind of kiss Sister Helen used to give him when he was sick or upset, just to show Heero that he was here, and he cared, because he did care, God only knew why. He just couldn't seem to help it, even though he doubted Heero would welcome the sentiment. Few of his fellow Gundam pilots were very comfortable with real affection, Duo included no matter how physical a being he knew he was, but Heero was even more skittish than most of them. Heero's skin was hot, damp and fevered, beneath his lips, and there was a single tight line of pain between his brows wrinkling his forehead, his eyes screwed shut tight beneath it. For Heero to be showing even that much pain on his face it had to be pretty damn bad, and Duo glanced over at the side of the bed to see what he was on. Hell, there was a drip in his arm—morphine, it looked like—and he was _still_ hurting that much?

Fuck.

Duo moved to pull away and suit actions to words by kneeling at the side of the bed, but he was prevented from doing so by Heero's hand—the one attached to the arm half-immobilized by the wires and tubes snaking into it, not the one stiff with bandages—suddenly clamping down in the hair at the back of his neck, fingers digging in and clasping tight, half in the braid and half not, and tugging him back down.

"Ow!" Duo yelped. "Damn it, Heero, that hurts! That's my _hair_, can't ya be a little more careful?"

Heero's forehead scrunched up with effort, though his eyes didn't so much as flicker open again. "Duo?" he croaked, in a soft, scratchy rasp of a voice that Duo could barely hear. It sounded like it hadn't been used in months.

Duo was honestly surprised by the strength of the relief that surged, warm and liquid and surprisingly painful, in his chest and up into his head, some of that warm liquid washing into the back of his eyes, making them prickle. He had to blink a couple times and swallow hard before he could manage to respond in anything more than a hoarse croak himself. "Yeah, it's me, Heero-buddy," he said. "I'm here for ya. What's up?" He reached up to fasten his fingers around Heero's where they were buried in his hair. "Take it easy, okay? You're kind of hooked up to a ton of machines and tubes right now, and I'm not goin' anywhere."

Heero's brow creased even further as if he was struggling to process that statement, and he took a ragged breath. His fingers didn't loosen. "Don't," he whispered.

"Don't want?" Duo asked. "Don't go anywhere?" Heero's head shifted in a barely noticeable acknowledgment of the accuracy of his guess. "Okay," he said. "I wasn't planning on it. I'm not leaving you, flyboy. You don't have to yank out my hair to make sure I stick around."

"H-hair?" Heero mumbled.

Duo let out a sigh. "Yeah, hair," he said. "You've got it in a death grip right now, and it's not like I mind, you can pull on my hair all you want, it's just that it sorta hurts, you know?"

Heero's lips moved in the shape of an "oh," though no sound came out, and his fingers finally loosened, moving to pull away. Before he could disengage completely, Duo closed his own fingers around Heero's and brought the hand down to rest against Heero's chest. "God," he said, "you really are superhuman, laid out on your back in the hospital and you can still hold onto me with that kind of force? It's just not fair, Heero."

Heero's nose scrunched up in a surprisingly childlike gesture of impatience. ". . . talk too much . . ." he mumbled, and Duo had to laugh.

"I know, I know," he said, bringing up the hand not clasped around Heero's to brush tangled strands of hair back from that pale bandaged face. "But if I didn't how would you know it was me, huh?"

"Always . . . know it's you . . . ." Heero muttered.

There was absolutely no good reason why those impatient, only vaguely affectionate words should bring the heat of a blush to Duo's cheeks, or make his throat close up so that he had to swallow again before he could respond, but they did nonetheless. "Hey, I'm that unforgettable?" he replied when he could talk again. "Good to hear!"

"Don't know . . . many people who don' have' . . . breathe . . . to talk . . . ." Heero replied, his hoarse words slurring together a bit, almost certainly a result of the morphine and whatever tranquilizers they were most likely pumping into him along with it. The doctors probably hadn't realized yet that the normal dosage wouldn't even be close to enough to work on Heero Yuy effectively, not when he had been extensively trained to resist the effects of drugs of all kinds, and Relena probably hadn't thought to warn them. It wasn't the sort of thing that occurred to normal people, even ones as smart and perceptive as she was.

"Hey!" Duo said in a mock-insulted voice. "That's a bit rich, considering it's coming from Mr. Who-Needs-Oxygen-I'm-Too-Tough-To-Breathe himself." He let his hand rest against Heero's hair. "How you doin', by the way?"

Heero's face twisted. "Hurts," he replied, still in that hoarse, it-hurts-to-talk voice. "Everythin' hurts, all 'ver." His features went all tight and scrunched up, and then he seemed to smooth them out with an effort of will. "Had worse, but . . . ." he trailed off, and blew his breath out in a soft, resigned sort of sigh.

"Yeah, buddy, I know," Duo said. "I know. Asked them to up the dosage on whatever drug cocktail you're on? 'Cause it's obviously not doing the job right now. I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige."

Heero's brow creased. "Don' like drugs," he mumbled. "Can' think. Dream . . . get lost. An' ever since started flying. . . Zero, dreams . . . worse." His free hand twitched restlessly in the blankets at his side, folding the sheet over, rubbing and twisting it between his fingers, before he forced it to go still. "Where's . . . 'lena? She . . . left? Dreams got bad . . . 'gain."

Duo swallowed hard. Maybe Heero would have preferred Relena by his side after all. "Sorry, pal, she had to go," he said. "She didn't want to, believe me, but she is Vice-Foreign Minister, after all, and after a while she just couldn't dodge the politicians anymore. Too much responsibility, yeah? She called me and asked me to come on down and take care'a you. So at least I'm here now?" He wished that last part hadn't sounded quite so uncertain, but he didn't seem able to help himself. He guessed his own emotions were still a little scattered, raw. Damn it. He was supposed to be okay, supposed to be strong. He hadn't been hurt or anything, after all. And he was used to all of them coming too close to death.

It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close—some of the lines of distress and pain smoothed from Heero's face, and his lips didn't exactly twitch, but his mouth relaxed, which was just as good when it came to Heero. "S'good," he mumbled, and his fingers tightened feebly on Duo's. "You're here . . . so's okay."

"R-really?" Duo asked, and his voice kind of cracked and got breathy in the middle of the word. He made a face. Christ, he sounded like a girl.

But hell, he'd never expected Heero to say anything like that, not in a million years. He'd never even expected that Heero would _think_ anything like that. Because Heero didn't need him, right? He never had. Well, he did, and _Duo_ knew that, knew that all of them needed each other, really, not quite like Quatre would have said but close, but he hadn't thought Heero knew. Hadn't thought Heero knew he needed anybody, except Relena, because she'd somehow broken through Heero's defenses. Probably just by talking at them until they crumbled. Duo had always sort of wondered why that hadn't worked for him, too, and figured it was because he wasn't a sweet, idealistic, stubborn princess of a girl with long blond hair and the big blue eyes to back it up. Instead he was just a too-skinny, obnoxiously smart-mouthed mechanic turned pilot of a boy who talked all the damn time. Not even half as good, right? Because he _wasn't_ good, not at all, not like Relena.

But now he saw that maybe it had worked, and he didn't know what to do with that realization. It kind of made him want to cry and throw his arms around Heero (which he wouldn't appreciate even at the best of times and definitely not now when it would jostle and hurt) and shout and laugh and sing and grin like an idiot all at the same time.

"R'lly," Heero mumbled. "Y' talk so much . . . dreams can't . . . get in. 'Cause you're . . . here. Not there . . . not . . . then."

"So I ain't annoying then?" Duo said with a hint of teasing triumph in his voice. "I don't talk too much?"

"_Used_ to it," Heero muttered, and the disgusted undertone beneath the hoarseness of his quiet voice was so close to normal for him that the laugh that escaped Duo was one of pure relief.

"Told you I'd grow on you, didn't I?" he teased, and that time Heero did smile. It was a smile he'd never seen on Heero's face before, lopsided and relaxed and sleepy and so sweet it stopped his breath in his throat.

"Don't . . . tell Duo . . . he was righ'," Heero whispered. "Get a big head. _Never_ shut up . . . then."

"Okay," Duo replied with a grin of his own. "I won't tell him, promise."

"Good." Heero sighed, his forehead tightening in the way that Duo could already tell meant he was hurting more than normal. "Head hurts," he said, just a statement of fact. "All the fuckin' time. 'm goin' back to sleep." His fingers tightened, worrying at Duo's hand. "You . . . watch my back? Don' let me—" his voice broke off.

Duo swallowed hard. He wasn't used to Heero appearing so openly vulnerable, not at all. "Sure," he said. "I got your six, man. Anytime."

". . . Understood." Heero turned his head toward the pillows and took a deep, sighing inhalation of breath, and in a few seconds he was out again.

With a sigh of his own for his now really aching back, Duo finally shifted from where he'd hunched over the bed, reaching down with his free hand to straighten the blankets over Heero's legs and tuck the ankle dangling free back under the covers, tugging down the leg of the thin hospital pajamas as he did so, all without letting go of Heero's hand. That done, he stuck out his foot to snag the only chair in the room, dragged it over so he could sit right beside the bed, and settled down to keep vigil for his sleeping friend.

Heero's hand was warm and relaxed in his, rough with familiar calluses. His skin only felt a little feverish against Duo's.


End file.
